What’s the Plan for Brexit? There Is No Plan

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Feb. 17, 2019

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CreditCreditAnthony Russo

The chaos of a British exit from the European Union without a deal has been often foretold, and in frightening detail — goods stranded for weeks, shortages of medicines, flight of businesses and jobs. The deadline, 11 p.m. London time on March 29, is so close that the civil service has begun advertising for applicants to an “E.U. Exit Emergencies Centre.” Yet Prime Minister Theresa May and her Parliament seem capable only of futile votes whose main effect is to harden positions and bring the precipice closer.

The votes themselves are often on matters that are symbolic at best — the last, on Thursday, was a nonbinding motion to support Mrs. May’s battered strategy. Her humiliating loss by a 303-to-258 vote was another example of the prime minister’s inability to overcome a deep rift within her own party, much less the partisan divisions in Parliament, since the resounding defeat of her Brexit plan last month.

Yet with every lost vote, her authority — and the European Union’s faith in her ability to get any deal through Parliament — is further diminished. Still, she remains at 10 Downing Street, the nominal head of a bitterly divided party loath to risk an election it could lose to Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, an old-fashioned left-winger whose own party is divided over Brexit.

What is alarming in this whirlpool of conflicting schemes and fears is the evident sentiment among hard-core Brexiteers that a no-deal exit is not only feasible, but perhaps desirable as a way for Britain to dramatically reaffirm its sovereignty. Their contempt for the chorus of warnings from businesses was best expressed by Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, when he was overheard last June to dismiss such concerns with an expletive. The hard-core Conservative camp has voted against any attempt to legislate a rejection of a no-deal exit.

Also striking in the debates is lack of recognition that the European Union, which has a major say in how Britain is released from complex legal and economic bonds formed over more than four decades, must agree to any deal. The bloc has steadfastly insisted that the agreement reached with Mrs. May’s government, and rejected by the British Parliament, is not open to substantive change.

European leaders have become increasingly unbuttoned in their frustrations with the British, most notably Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, who openly mused at a news conference, “I’ve been wondering what that special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.” Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, was equally blunt in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País when he warned Britain that outside the European Union, it would be “a middling economy stuck in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Mrs. May’s next confrontation with Parliament is set for the end of the month, when she must report on what progress she has made with the European Union, which is likely to be none. Following that, the Parliament may vote to take the management of the Brexit process away from her. Mrs. May’s last move may be to wait until the last minute and confront the Parliament with a choice between her negotiated deal and a long extension of the Brexit deadline. That, at least, is what her chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, was overheard telling colleagues in a Brussels bar.

The way the process has been going, counting on a reasonable vote at the last minute is seriously tempting disaster. There are several sites already displaying a countdown to Brexit, and their message seems to be that the 11th hour has struck, and getting an extension now might not be the worst idea.